Blog

Out in the Castro last night Bevan (elephant) and I (giraffe) went. We began with food at Harvey’s and then made our way into Moby’s for a drink before bumping into and subsequently spending a good amount of minutes chatting with activist Cleve Jones at The Mix. Our evening ended in the Fillmore McDonald’s drive-thru where we procured, with a credit card, chicken nuggets (for me) and a bunless Filet-O-Fish (for he).

When my dad and I were in London a couple months ago I mentioned that I was thinking about taking July off from drinking and he actually started laughing at me.

"You don't think I can do it?" I asked.

"No," he replied.

Well daddio, you were wrong.

For 31 days in July (and, for good measure, a couple at the end of June) I didn't consume any alcohol, not a single drop. In all fairness to my dad, however, even I thought I would have to put this particular 40 Before 40 goal off until the bitter end (like age 39 and eleven months-ish) but the moment he told me he didn't think I could do it I had no other choice but to try and prove him wrong as quickly as I possibly could.

So thank you Dad, for not believing in me.

The no drinking thing wasn't actually as tough as I thought it would be. In fact, there were only a couple of occasions during those 33 days when I wished I had a drink in my hand, once at a 4th of July BBQ and once during every single second of every single brunch.

Instead of drinking/staying out late/being hung over I spent July sleeping more than I usually do, reading a lot and probably running myself into early knee replacement surgery (I logged a little over 115 miles including four half marathons over consecutive Saturdays).

Even though I won't be continuing my boozelessness into August (Micky’s in town from Chicago tonight and I'll be in Provincetown next week), I'm happy I did it and, I will admit, a little bit proud of myself.